Friday, June 29, 2012

Rolling in Money

I got a text from Walt after he went to the bank to pick up the
foreign currency we were going to take on our trip. We will be visiting 6 countries:
Germany, Netherlands, Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia, and Austria. All
except Hungary and the Czech Republic use the Euro. The other two have their own
currency.

I did find out, though, in trying to scan the bill to post here that
there is, built into the software, a warning that you can scan the bill, but you will not
be able to print it. I thought I could get around that by using a screen capture,
but gosh darn it, when I pulled the screen capture up, I got the same warning. I did alter
the bill, in case printing it on a blog was a federal or international offense or
something (still leery after my negative McDonald experiences in Paris and Helsinki!).
I've blurred out the I.D. numbers and the date of issue and am assuming that you
don't intend to blow the graphic up, print it, and try to get to Prague and spend it.

The reason Walt had to text me about picking up our money was because
I had gone to San Rafael for the day to have lunch with my mother. It is the last
opportunity I'll have to see her before we leave because we are going to Santa Barbara for
a few days first and then home for a couple of days, and then off to Prague. I can't
believe it is so close.

It was a nice afternoon with my mother. I think that reading
Anne Morrow Lindbergh's book (which my mother doesn't remember hearing anything about now)
had an effect on me that I didn't realize until I sat down to have the usual conversation
that we have when we get together. I just enjoyed the time with her, laughed at the
same jokes, listened to every story as if it was the first time I was hearing it, answered
questions several times, and didn't get sad about it, like I usually do. This is her
"now" and I am enjoying the "now" that she is living in. It
could be so much worse!

She said she hadn't felt like going to the store, so she decided that
we'd go to the restaurant at the golf club, which is near her house. It's a nice
place and I like it. As we were getting ready to go, she asked me where I wanted to
go for lunch.

The golf club is very nice and we each ordered crab melt sandwiches.

They were delicious, but huge. I have half of mine to have for
lunch tomorrow. We continued our visit back at home after lunch, but I could see she was
getting very sleepy, so I decided to go home early. She seemed relieved when I said I was
going to leave.

I am starting to think that I'm not meant to take this trip
Both knees, though better, are still problematic; the heel on one foot would have
developed a bister if I had had to walk more than 3 blocks to the bus yesterday; and now
what I thought was a rash on my nether regions turns out to be a cyst the size of a jumbo
olive, which I am soaking and, thank goodness it is starting to shrink...I don't want to
think about sitting on one cheek for 12 hours in a plane!

Also, my computer is going haywire. I'm taking it in to the
guru before we leave to have him figure out why it is so much worse than it was when I
brought it to him a couple of months ago. I have to reboot 2-3 times a day and
Firefox crashes regularly.

I am feeling like I'm walking around with a big cloud over my head
and wondering if this is the right time to be getting on a plane to fly across the
Atlantic!